Ataxia
by TheOtherShin
Summary: Very short and old SNK one-shot, basically exploring Eren's thought process - if it can be called that - the first time he transformed into a Titan.


_((My first and only SNK fanfiction...just a short one-shot. I actually wrote this months ago while I was more involved in the storyline, but I figure I should bring it back because it's actually kind of okay...even with zero dialogue._

_-Shinsun))_

Ataxia

By now, I would have been shocked if I wasn't used to pain. I thought I'd experienced nearly every shade of discomfort and agony I ever would... but nothing could prepare me for this.

I was wrenched from the air; blunted teeth the size of wagons clamping down on my leg, breaking through skin, muscle, and bone... Flesh shredded in the split-second that the limb was clenched between monstrous incisors, blood bursting, spattering my body as I fell. Hard terracotta shingles bit into my shoulder as I collided with a rooftop, and I skidded a little under gravity, but the grating force and ache and scrape was utterly numbed by the agony seizing the entire lower half of my body... and somewhere in the fog of my mind I was distantly aware that I had lost my leg.

I felt my muscles' instinctive need to shut themselves down, to recuperate from the shock... but a scream brought me to my senses; my vision blurred and fuzzed with pain. For a moment I could only watch as the behemoth of a Titan's huge mouth began to close around Armin... and then desperation jolted through me, filling my tormented body with adrenaline. I doubted that I had enough fuel in my tank to propel me to where I needed to go, but my hand automatically hit the pressure gage, and I was thrown into the air despite the protests of my flesh. By some miracle, I landed between the salivating jaws of the Titan, forcing my arm forward to snatch Armin's wrist before he could be swallowed down that cavern of a throat. Saliva was coating his hand, and it almost slipped from mine, but I wasn't going to let go now. Shutting out the screams resonating through my damaged leg and putting all of my hard-won willpower into heaving my friend to safety. I was deaf, nearly blind and barely able to breathe... Blood and sweat ran together into my inflamed, aching eyes, and every limb felt heavy... slow... I was hardly aware of anything... but I knew at least that Armin was alive and safe... and I remembered what he'd told me of the outside world.

I hoped he, at least, would live to see it someday.

He was shouting something, and I made a last, futile attempt to escape from my demise... but it was inevitable that I would fail. I could barely move, and I had willingly sacrificed myself to save my friend. One of us would have had to pay the price either way.

In seeming slow motion, the enormous jaws of the Titan closed, gargantuan teeth slicing through my outstretched arm, severing half of the appendage with a gut-wrenching _squelch_. I didn't have the strength left to scream... and my fading vision went black a moment before boulder-sized molars set about mincing my battered body, preparing me for the short journey down the monster's throat.

.

.

I opened my eyes. Everything was blurred... and something was different. It felt like... they weren't _my_ eyes... they belonged to someone else. I shook my head muzzily to try and clear it, startled by the crack of huge teeth bumping together with the momentum. My sense of smell awakened to a very simple array of odors. Sweat. Blood. Chaos. I shifted my unsteady vision, trying to make sense of the world wavering around me. Everything looked diminutive... miles below me, it seemed. Confused, my head aching to try to process thought that didn't seem possible - slow at best – I brought my hand in front of my face.

It was huge. Enormous. Big enough to pick up a dozen humans easily. To rip the top off of a... what were those called... those towers of stone...? Buildings...? Somehow I felt like I just... couldn't _think..._

My flickering gaze shifted sluggishly, struggling to interpret shadows... moving forms...

I homed in on a very obvious one. A Titan, standing stupidly in the entrance to an alleyway, wobbling slightly on tree trunk legs. Rage roared through me, setting my skin on fire, and a guttural roar that wracked my much-larger throat shuddered from me, vibrating all the way into the enormous soles of my feet. I lunged at the monster, knocking it off its feet and pummeling every inch of it I could reach, each blow more vicious than the last. Blood flecked my face, flying from ravaged skin and ruined muscle, tissue and bone giving way even as steam poured from the Titan's melting flesh, clouding what was left of my vision with gas. A femur shattered beneath my fist, an arm torn off and tossed aside; entrails and other such gore staining my hands. I left the dead monstrosity disintegrating and permeating steam, my sensitive ears picking up the dull thud of earth-shaking footfalls. There was more work to be done here.

I stumbled upon more of the staggering monsters wandering the streets, and without a thought I decimated them one by one; rending sinew, spilling torrents of hot, red blood, working my hands raw, and regenerating them once I'd worn them down to bone... And perversely rejoicing in the utter abandon, the glee of the slaughter, the inability to think clearly that blinded me to all but my goal. To kill them all.

My bellow of victory echoed off the buildings as I ripped the head from another Titan, hurling it as far as I could and watching it smash into solid rock, its dead eyes glazed and staring blankly at me. Around me everything stank of death and bloodshed, and melting corpses littered the ground at my feet. I was untouchable. And I loved and hated every moment of it.

Loved it because I knew, somewhere it the cluttered haze of my mind, that I was avenging all the lives these horrors had taken, bringing my one dream that seemed faraway to life; and that I could deal such destruction with my hands alone brought me immense but primitive satisfaction.

….Hated it, because I had become the one thing I had always sought to destroy, the one thing I was still destroying... the one thing I despised with every breath in my body. Even in the mess that was my dwindling consciousness, I knew I had let myself become a monster like them. Even as I tore at their sickly grinning faces and kicked their steaming remains away ... I hated myself for it.

But I felt I could go on forever like this, butchering the horrid beasts that fell so easily and unsuspectingly to my hand... In the end, though, I found my limit. Outnumbered, swarmed by the monsters tearing at my flesh with their teeth and groping hands, I knew I was drained... unable to fight back. Fingers peeled my skin away; stupor moans and the shredding of muscle tissue grating on my eardrums. I fought until I was numb from trying, the blackness settling over my mind as it shut down reminding me of some discarded, but recent memory...

My rolling eyes were drawn to a familiar lurching form suddenly... and something in me snapped. That monster... the bastard, for lack of a better word, the abnormality that had eaten Thomas... The primal side of my mind was warning me that the beast was dangerous, that it could run and jump unlike the other meandering Titans... but another part of me raged for vengeance, and I wrenched free of the grip the clamoring Titans had on me, grabbing the monster with every last ounce of my strength and plunging my teeth into its neck, destroying its putrid excuse for life at the source. The being collapsed with a resounding thud, and I found myself unable to stand as well. I fell as my eyes dropped closed, the earth rushing up to meet me as I slammed to the ground and stayed down. I could feel my skin melting, my overheating body dispelling steam as I fell apart... But I welcomed it. One more monster gone from this world. One more step towards my ultimate goal of eradicating them all.

_-Shinsun_


End file.
